I've often heard suggestions that fines be specified in law as percentages of revenue. IANAL and don't know how feasible that is, but it makes more sense to me than raw dollar amounts which, by their nature, make crime more affordable over time due to inflation and more affordable in proportion to income.
I.e. a $5 fine is a harsher punishment in 1990 than in 2020, and is a greater deterrent to someone with $50 in their pocket than someone with $50,000. But a fine of 1% of yearly revenue is the same effect across time and class.
I agree that the original comment was not overtly _un_friendly. I also think that the reply represents a better way.
> If the only way some one can give usable problem analysis and criticism is by including suggested fixes,
I think we can all agree that the inclusion of suggested fixes does make feedback more helpful in general.
> and delicately toning down the criticism, then far fewer people are going to be willing to expend enough effort to interact
It does require a little additional effort to write kinder feedback, to take the moment to address the human being behind an Internet comment in a similar way to how we might address a person face to face. I'm as guilty as any of failing in that way.
But if criticism's aim is to improve, it will be more successful if it's more easily digested by its audience. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar and all that.
And really the reply above isn't that big a difference. In my view, it's a sign of intelligence, learning how to communicate effectively. If raising the bar only this high results in "far fewer people" interacting, maybe that's a good thing. I don't really need to hear from people unable to tame their own words when they have no time limit on typing them, and I'd rather belong to a community with fewer responses but a higher proportion of politeness and shared humanity than an array of comments expressing the kind of gruff emphasis on failure that bookends the original comment, "Your gif doesn't convey your idea __at all__," and "i'm confused as to why this project even exists."
Including good suggested fixes is certainly better than not. But no suggested fixes are better than bad suggested fixes. Finding problems is a different skill set than proposing solutions. Letting people with these complementary skill sets coöperate in improving something seems to be better than requiring one person have both. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
I'm not sure why emphasis on failure is a problem, when that failure is precisely what is being communicated. However, the comment certainly does look a lot more unfriendly in light of the responses. Perhaps I was too kind to "i'm confused as to why this project even exists", because I don't understand why I would ever want "code snippets" myself.
As a product person, I want to hear someone's proposed solutions even if their ideas are crap. The reason is that sometimes their proposed solutions help me understand the problem better, and sometimes there is an aspect of their proposed solution that makes it into the final solution too.
> If you gave $700 to a company who promised to deliver you a scooter a few years down the line if all of the dominoes fell exactly as planned... I would argue that you got what you paid for even if it amounts to nothing tangible in the long run.
Is that what happened with this company? That's the model of kickstarters and the like, but this story sounds like it was a real company offering a product for sale. If a company can form, offer a product, sell 350 units, pay employees & expenses, then fold without delivering product or refund, nor facing any legal repercussions, what's to stop the same employees and founders from following that method ad infinitum? Form company #2, offer a different vapor, take in money from sales of the never-to-be product, spend it on salaries, declare that the product won't be delivered nor refunds given, and move on to company #3. If that's what this company has done, and the court systems are never burdened with tackling such an issue, it is a viable if entirely unethical model for the people involved.
You don't really "sell" products on kickstarter, you try and convince people that you'll actually follow through on your vision.
I've backed a dozen or so, and I've got about a 50% hit rate of anything coming through. The failures are always interesting. Trying to guess, ahead of time, which ones are failures (or scams) - is an education into itself. They always seem so earnest in the beginning.
But, yeah - go into kickstarters with your eyes open. Particularly with people who don't have a track record of deliverying - that, in my mind, is the best signal around. If they've come through more then 3 or 4 times in the past, that's a good indication they may come through on this one.
Then you have a legitimate claim. Unfortunately, it sounds like you are an unsecured creditor, thus you can get in line at the bankruptcy hearing (metaphorically speaking) but you are going to be second to last in line after the secured creditors, employee wages, taxes, etc thus are not likely to see anything.
I consider kickstarter an entertainment product. You pay to watch and participate a bit. The physical product/non-product at the end is part of the "story".
This is a bit nebulous. Every consumer, especially where the expense is a lot of money for them would do well to give this idea more thought.
A pretty website, a few employees and some prototypes doesn’t hit a meaningful bar, let alone millions of dollars in capital (which this joint didn’t even have), TBH. Too bad fuckedcompany is no longer around, it did a great service.
How is that link related to this company? Do you have some information they were even the same supplier?
Regardless, doesn't change my basic point, which is that "real company" is a nebulous concept and not prudent for a consumer. My neighbor's venture without even a business certificate may be a more "real company" because if he fucks me over he has at least has to see me everyday for years.
Depends who you’re scamming. Quite a few powerful and rich people who I would classify as being “scammers”, but their victim is usually a group of people such as taxpayers.
Plenty of companies never deliver a product, hence chargebacks being built into our credit & debit systems (and being available for checks in a restricted form)
Informing all consumers in the market is not a legitimately accomplishable solution to the problem. As long as there are 350 consumers unaware that these people have done this before, and they never have a day in court over it, this story can repeat itself forever.
Assuming this is as easy as you make it out to be, don't you think it would be relatively easy to host this scam business' site offshore/anonymously and scam people outside the jurisdiction of the US courts?
I don't think you are either. But it's a risk you're taking buying a product from a fledgling internet-based startup. Shall we make it easier to start an internet-based business over a brick and mortar shop with laws that benefit the former with the latter's inherent advantage?
> But it's a risk you're taking buying a product from a fledgling internet-based startup.
This is my problem. It is not reasonable to expect a purchase of a product online to be a gamble, a risk that you will get nothing in exchange for your money. No matter whether they're internet based, no matter how old they are, if a company offers a product for sale, it should not be "risky" to purchase it.
The comment I replied to said we shouldn't burden the courts with taking the people behind such companies to task. But if we don't, there's nothing stopping them from doing it again and again.
When I buy a product from a brick and mortar store, there is NO risk to not receiving the product.
When I buy a product online, this is ALWAYS a risk, no matter what.
Your solution uses my tax dollars to make online businesses more competitive with brick and mortar stores, thereby making it more difficult to run a profitable brick and mortar store/mom and pop shop.
>No matter whether they're internet based, no matter how old they are, if a company offers a product for sale, it should not be "risky" to purchase it.
Your solution offloads some risk from the consumer onto everyone else. I agree with the comment, you put the burden on the courts and by extension, me, to pay taxes to support other people's poor ability to reason about what businesses may or may not be scams and encourage risk-taking buying products from risky businesses.
>But if we don't, there's nothing stopping them from doing it again and again.
Again, informed consumers... Accept you're taking a risk buying a product from a fledgling internet-based startup, a risk that wouldn't just go away even if we all incur the large expense getting the courts involved.
We're both basically just saying everything we've already said. No sense in going in circles
> the only way it may have become not that is if we have allowed our complacencies to kick in
Just wanted to observe that this belief presupposes the US ever lived up to the principles you outline. US history shows that the country has never quite lived up to its touted values.
The rational approach to all peer review is to assume there's a flaw and look for it. Quite a few commenters seem bothered by this reflexive reaction to published research, when the entire point of publishing research is to have it picked apart by critical thinkers everywhere.
From the paper's abstract, though, "The results suggest that a 10% reduction in daily PM2.5 and ozone could save $1.4 billion in crime costs per year, a previously overlooked cost associated with pollution." This statement sounds like it's implying a causal relationship to me.
> their results only show a strong correlative relationship
The paper's abstract says "The results suggest that a 10% reduction in daily PM2.5 and ozone could save $1.4 billion in crime costs per year, a previously overlooked cost associated with pollution." In my opinion this is a statement of a causal relationship, not merely a correlation.
I wonder why they didn't reverse that relationship, too, and propose that violent crime increases pollution.
I would love to read the actual paper, but it's only available to people with money.
> I wonder why they didn't reverse that relationship, too, and propose that violent crime increases pollution.
Probably because you can easily rule out that possibility using common sense, whereas causation in the other direction is at least thinkable and worth investigating further.
I.e. a $5 fine is a harsher punishment in 1990 than in 2020, and is a greater deterrent to someone with $50 in their pocket than someone with $50,000. But a fine of 1% of yearly revenue is the same effect across time and class.